This invention relates generally to commercial cooking vessels, such as deep fat fryers and pasta cookers and particularly to cooking vessels in which the heat transfer from the combustion products to the cooking medium (oil or water) is enhanced. While the invention is described in connection with a deep fat fryer, the teachings and claims should not be restricted thereto.
Commercial deep fat frying equipment, for cooking foodstuffs such as french fries, chicken and the like, generally use gas or electricity as the heat source. In equipment that uses gas as a heat source, the gas burners are positioned in one or more heat tubes that are situated in the cooking vessel or pot and which are immersed in, or otherwise in intimate thermal contact with, the cooking oil. The combustion products from the burners are exhausted or vented by conventional means to a flue or exhaust. More recently infrared (IR) type gas burners have been used. Such burners include a ceramic material that is heated by the forced flow of a mixture of air and gas to very high temperatures which produces heat transfer by radiation, as well as by conduction and convection of the combustion products through the heat tube. It has been found that with the invention, a three burner-three tube deep fat fryer may be operated with better results with only two burners.
In accordance with the preferred embodiment of the invention, the combustion products from the two burners are directed by a divided, insulated plenum through the bottom section of a divided center tube, back through the top section of the center tube, to the insulated plenum and exhausted to a flue. The center tube is fitted with a baffle device consisting of a divider plate that separates the tube into top and bottom sections (in communication with respective portions of the insulated plenum) and a pair of zig-zag metal strips or baffles, attached to opposite sides of the divider plate, for disrupting the laminar flow of the combustion products and enhancing heat transfer to the tube walls (and to the cooking oil) and minimizing heat loss through the flues.